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Monday, September 19, 2011

And the exciting physics news may be … nothing!

As various news stories have pointed out, CERN’s search for the “God particle” – the Higgs boson predicted by the currently dominant physics model – is not going well.

"We are now entering a very exciting phase in the hunt for the Higgs boson," Sharma said. "If the Higgs boson exists between 114-145 GeV, we should start seeing statistically significant excesses over estimated backgrounds, and if it does not then we hope to rule it out over the entire mass range. One way or the other we are poised for a major discovery, likely by the end of this year."

This isn’t good or bad news, but it’s exciting news. If things don’t fit, this means there are a lot of new things to be discovered.